A United Future?

Rodney Hide’s blog has alerted me to a statement by Peter Dunne that United Future will seek to back whichever party gets the most votes at the election.

Putting aside the sneering tone in Dunne’s press release (remember when they claimed to be the common sense party that avoids personal attacks) and also the irony in United Future referring to Act as a tiny low polling party (ACT got more votes last election and is ahead of United Future in almost all polls), we still have the statement “United Future will, in the first instance, seek to negotiate a supporting arrangement with the party to whom the voters gave the greatest number of seats in Parliament.”

Now I’m sorry but this is madness and a total absence of principle. Is he really saying that if say Party A gets 40.1% and Party B 40.2% they will automatically negotiate with Party B to form a Government?

Are they also saying that even if Party A has policies far far more in line with what United Future professes to stand for, they will still ignore those policies and principles and try and stitch up a deal with Party B just because they got a few more votes?

Are they also saying they will ignore the effect of other smaller parties? Let’s say Labour gets 40%. Now if National gets 39% and ACT 5% he is saying he will try and do a deal with Labour yet if National gets 41% and ACT 3%, then he will try and do a deal with National?

I don’t think I could come up with a more stupid policy for coalition negotiations if I tried.